Nobody wants to hear this, but the author is right. Simple minded atheists are going to flock to every article in the 'belief' section and try to peddle their monkey minded nothingness. Guess what. Atheists are nothing new. You've been around since before Jesus. No joke. Just 500 years ago Atheists were setting fire to churches, and killing priests, claiming allegiance to various hethan lords pagans or witches. Whatever . Setting fire they still wish they could do. And many 'Atheists' believe in 'vibes' and all kinds of pagan monkey business. Anyway, hate and violence is a disease. And the biggest atheists of the Modern era were some of the sickets. Pol Pot, banned religion. Killed 2 million in concentration camps. Mao tried to ban religion, Stalin tried to ban religion, Hitler etc. All started off as Religious people, who grew to hate religion, tried to ban it, and ultimately became mass murderers on the scale of millions – in Pol Pot and Hitlers case, killing especially those who opposed their brand of Atheist and in Hitler's case slightly mystic pagan 'beliefs'. So I don't want to hear about the crusades, where like 489 people were killed. Give it a rest pagans. Yours is the true evil, by count.

Men of science are men of science. God and science are not mutually exclusive. Unless there is one among you that can cure cancer, or outlive the sun? Let's go ahead and keep science, science. And leave religion to the unknown.

Of course, unless you are a monkey. Then by all means, believe in nothing but the dirt you eat.

"Just 500 years ago Atheists were setting fire to churches, and killing priests, claiming allegiance to various hethan lords pagans or witches."

Where? Because around the 1600s, Christians were mostly occupied with burning anybody who had the gall not to agree with them, at least in Europe.
In the USA, they were more preoccupied with expanding.

"Pol Pot, banned religion. Killed 2 million in concentration camps."

True enough. Does not mean a good Christian won't murder and exterminate when he sees fit.
As for the rest... Bull. The Germans still had Gott mit uns on their belts and Mein Kampf is rife with Biblical references.

"So I don't want to hear about the crusades, where like 489 people were killed. Give it a rest pagans. Yours is the true evil, by count. "

On the first day, maybe. Problem is, it went on for centuries.

"Unless there is one among you that can cure cancer, or outlive the sun? Let's go ahead and keep science, science. And leave religion to the unknown. "

Fine by me, but keep your religion out of my science. Example: prayers do jack about cancer. And intelligent design is religion in a scientific domain.

Some sort of bizarre whargarble in which atheists and pagans are the same thing somehow.

You say Hitler tried to ban religion.... than say he was a pagan in the next sentence. Which is it?

What has cancer or the sun got to do with it? We can't outlive the sun therefore science is wrong and your computer runs on Jesus' tears?

The Crusades killed 489 people? Was it a centuries long snowball fight that engulfed the middle east? 7,000 died in one of the first battles of the first Crusade (Dorylaeum) so that puts paid to your nonsense

Hitler killed jews for Jesus. Stalin enrolled in a seminary. Mao and Pol Pot outlawed other religions because they didn't want competition for their own. Christians called women witches and set them on fire so they could take their land.

All you theists are mass murderers who killed millions. You would have a higher score except for the atheists who restrained you.

While I've never really held much credence to the numbers quoted for battles and believe the figures to be grossly inflated, Even I don't believe that less than 500 people were killed during the crusades. We can probably individually name more casualties than that.

I'm SOOOO fucking tired of people calling Hitler an atheist. His religion was hard to pin down exactly, that's for sure. And it was some weird combination of Christianity, mysticism and various Pagan beliefs but he was certainly not an atheist. Or if he was, he did a damn good job at hiding it given that even in his personal writings he never said he disbelieved in God. Far from trying to ban religion, as you dishonestly implied, he promoted it to the heavens. Gott mitt uns ring a bell?

As a Pagan with an atheist son and husband, I can say with complete certainty you know approximately jack and shit about either one.

Pagans recognize multiple Gods/Goddesses/spirits/energy.

Atheists believe in none. They don't believe in the existence of mine, yours, or anyone else's and they aren't just denying the existence of your God because they hate him; they DO NOT BELIEVE ANY GODS EXIST.

At least give enough of a shit regarding that which you're spouting off about to learn the fucking difference.

"Just 500 years ago Atheists were setting fire to churches, and killing priests, claiming allegiance to various hethan lords pagans or witches."

You have some sort of evidence of this, no doubt.

"And the biggest atheists of the Modern era were some of the sickets. Pol Pot, banned religion. Killed 2 million in concentration camps. Mao tried to ban religion, Stalin tried to ban religion, Hitler etc."

Banning religion does not make one an atheist, particularly when the one doing so is doing it for political reasons. Religion was banned in those regimes--except Hitler's--because it was in direct competition with the State for authority, which was something that no self-respecting dictator could let slide.

"So I don't want to hear about the crusades, where like 489 people were killed."

You know that there was more than one Crusade, right? You also know, or should know, that several tens of millions of people were murdered over the course of those Crusades. You should also be aware that the Pope always absolved the Crusaders of any sins they were likely to commit during the Crusades before they went on them because they were doing "God's work" or some silly shit.

Ironically, 500 years ago was around the start of the Reformation; Luther nailed his theses to that church door in 1517. That eventually did lead to iconoclasm and destruction and confiscation of church property, and execution of "witches", by Protestant Christians.
It is completely wrong and false to separate all mass killings in the world into "theist" and "atheist" categories. It is better and more accurate to lay all mass killings at the feet of blind obedience and hierarchy.
Also, the violence of the Christian centuries in Europe is not only represented by "the Crusades". There have been many thousands of cruel and exploitative regimes and kings, and dozens of destructive religious wars since the Roman Empire adopted Christianity. Vlad the Impaler, Ivan the Terrible, William the Conqueror, Henry VIII, Louis XIV, the Borgias, and other bastards and tyrants too numerous to mention, all Christians and most claiming a divine right to rule. They differed from the twentieth century tyrants only in not having access to efficient mass killing methods.
Also there is the burning of heretics, the torture and execution of "witches", the internecine wars of the Reformation, (still an element which effect the conflict in Northern Ireland), the Spanish Inquisition, the persecution of Jews, the incredibly destructive Thirty Year's War, the St Bartholomew Massacre, the sectarian-exacerbated ethnic conflicts in the east. Neither the Catholics or the Protestants, or even the Orthodox Christians, come out of European history looking good.
At least the "Black Book of Communism" is closed. The Black Book of Capital, the Black Book of the Abrahamic religions, are having chapters added to them as we speak.

Pol Pot, Mao and Stalin all formed a person cult around themselves; they were the God in their society. That's hardly atheistic.
Hitler was a Christian Catholic creationist, stupid.

I think you need to re-read the history books about the crusades; much, much more than 489 people were killed. 489 Swedes might have been killed, perhaps, but there were lots and lots of young men from other countries who wanted a bit of the action, and who had nothing to do at home. Not to mention the men, women and children living in the countries they attacked, that were killed.

Just 500 years ago Atheists were setting fire to churches, and killing priests, claiming allegiance to various hethan[sic] lords pagans or witches.Let's, 500 years ago would be 1612, otherwise known as the height of the Protestant reformation and iconoclasm. So you see, all those burning churches and slain priests had nothing to do with atheism, and everything to do with Christianity splitting itself over splitting hairs.

Also if those atheists were serving pagan warlods and witches (highly unlikely in the 17th century) then they wouldn't be atheists, they would be pagans. Pagan is a catch-all invented by Christians to describe people belonging to the worship of pre-Christian polytheistic pantheons. Atheists are people who don't hold a belief in any god. So you literally can't be a pagan atheist anymore than you can be a Pagan Christian or Muslim. In fact, the truly ironic part is that during the 1st century, pagan Romans called early Christians atheists, because they were going around telling everyone their gods weren't real.

The only thing that's even remotely correct in your little screed is that you're right, atheism has been around for a while and is nothing new. In fact, let's face it, as long as there have been people making claims of magic sky-people controlling the world with super-powers, there have been people wise and reasonable enough to call bullshit on them.

Have you ever heard the term "ideology"? Most people are more driven by what they believe - not by what they don't believe.

Pol Pot also believed and said that everybody wearing glasses was a bourgeois, I don't hear the all so evil academic atheists saying that - or that there even is such a thing as the bourgeoisie. So, why don't you think before opening your mouth?

Just because a dictator wants to stamp out religions doesn't mean he's an atheist. It just means he doesn't want competition for peoples' allegiance. Some dictators use religion, some try to stamp it out, and some try to foment strife between rival sects to keep everyone fighting each other instead of him. It rarely has much really to with their own personal religious beliefs.